On-the-ground reflections from the 2013 Marathon

Some of them pushed through April 15, 2013, by working to help others who were badly injured in the bombings. All were left irrevocably shaken by the tragedy. These race officials, first responders and runners have returned for the 118th running of the Boston Marathon on Monday (coverage begins at 8:30 a.m. ET on Universal Sports). Here are their stories of why Boston is so special:

JOE ANDRUZZI

Most of the heroes who held tourniquets and carried the gravely injured after last year’s Boston Marathon bombings were, as Vice President Biden put it, “ordinary citizens doing extraordinary things.”

Then there was Joe Andruzzi, a former offensive guard for the New England Patriots.

Andruzzi was at the finish line to support those running to raise money for his foundation. The Joe Andruzzi Foundation provides support to cancer patients and holds a yearly fundraiser at Forum, a restaurant near where the second bomb went off.

A woman is carried from the scene on Exeter Street after two explosions went off on Boylston Street near the finish line of the 117th Boston Marathon on April 15, 2013. (Photo by Bill Greene/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)

When the blast occurred, Andruzzi helped tear down the barriers. A photo of him carrying an injured woman, with her terrified young daughters in the background, became one of the memorable images from that day.

“Instinct kicked in,” Andruzzi said. Three of his brothers are New York City firefighters, and his father was a New York police officer. “I had cancer in 2007, so I look at life with a whole new perspective, and my brothers were part of 9/11, so I try to move forward and focus on my family, my community and helping others.”

On Tuesday’s anniversary of the attack, Andruzzi attended a tribute to survivors, those killed and first responders. “It was an eerie feeling driving here,” he said but added there was also inspiration, noting foundations that some survivors have started. “It really shows how you can take a negative, make it a positive and move forward with your life.”

On Monday, Andruzzi will be back near the finish line, and the woman he carried in that photo will be running again, he said.

“We’re going back to finish what we started,” Andruzzi said.

JOAN BENOIT SAMUELSON

For many Joan Benoit Samuelson is the face of the Boston Marathon. In 1979, she entered the race as a little-known athlete and won, wearing a Red Sox cap across the finish line. She again took the laurel wreath in 1983. Besides the tradition of the race, what she loves most about Boston is the strength it summons in people.

“Not only in the athletes. You have to be strong of heart and physique to endure the 26.2 miles,” she said. “Many of those who were harmed and injured, they came to cheer. And the runners turned around and have cheered the survivors and the victims.”

Monday’s race will be full of tributes and reflection, but Benoit Samuelson also hopes it’s about much more. “We’ve come to the threshold, now let the race go on,” Benoit said, paraphrasing Thomas Grilk, the executive director of the Boston Athletic Association.

Heather Abbott, a spectator who lost her leg in the Boston Marathon bombings, runs along with Dan Connors, right, a physical therapist, and Joan Benoit Samuelson, left, a marathon runner, while wearing her new prosthetic that will allow her to run. (Photo by Greg M. Cooper / USA TODAY Sports)

“Healing obviously is still taking place,” said Benoit Samuelson, 56, who will run Monday. “I have met many of the survivors. They’re all recovering at different paces. But most of the survivors I’ve met really want to get on with their lives and I think Adrianne’s words yesterday were a real call to action for people.”

At the tribute event Tuesday, dancer Adrianne Haslet-Davis, who lost her left leg in the attacks, asked that April 15 be a day of remembrance and a day of action.

For those who have run the Boston Marathon, the phrase “left on Boylston” means only one thing. It means you’re in the home stretch. So what will left on Boylston mean for Benoit Samuelson this year?

“I hope that it’s a turn in the right direction with the entire healing process and with the people who were injured that day whose lives will be forever different and changed,” she said.

She hopes that Monday will bring a return to what this race has always been – a celebration, a state holiday of sorts, a reason to cheer.

“I heard and saw and felt a call from the survivors to the community to say, Let’s move forward. Let’s help where help is needed, let’s just get on with the good things and the important things in life.”

LT. WILLIAM COULTER

Massachusetts State Police Detective Lieutenant William Coulter knows what it feels like to finish a marathon.

He has completed the last 30 Boston Marathons.

So he knows how some of his law enforcement colleagues felt last year when they ran down Boylston Street in the final yards of their 26.2-mile races.

Exhausted.

But he also knows why the handful of military and law enforcement runners who were near the bomb blasts on Boylston Street last year ignored their tiredness and pain and jumped into hero mode.

“They all raced back into tragedy,” Coulter says. “One second they were runners finishing the Boston Marathon. But then they became policemen and military, and for them, there is no option. They went right into the action.”

Among the responders were Iraq War veterans David Diamond and Chris Spielhagen, Massachusetts state trooper David Twomey and New Hampshire State Police sergeant Sean Haggerty.

They rushed into Marathon Sports, the iconic sporting goods store on Boylston, for aid supplies. They fastened tourniquets. They fashioned makeshift stretchers. They knocked down barricades. They loaded injured spectators into wheelchairs.

Coulter, 62, organizes an unofficial runners group every year at Boston made up of law enforcement and military personnel. This year, the group will total around 350 – and will again include Coulter and the four responders named above.

“We’re just trying to let everybody know that we won’t be affected by this,” said Twomey, who will be running his ninth Boston. “We’re going to come back like it’s business as usual.”

Coulter was stopped short of the finish line last year by law enforcement officials, who had set up barricades after the bombs exploded. Coulter knew some of the officers and offered to help but was told that since he was running gear, it would be confusing to allow him inside the barriers.

Coulter rendezvoused with others in his group and the next day went back to work, investigating the crime. He was in Watertown when Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was captured.

A tribute and flag raising to those affected on the anniversary of Boston Marathon Bombing at the marathon finish line. VP Biden, center, Families of those killed in the bombing,(rear) the Mass. Gov.Deval Patrick, To VP Biden’s left) , and Mayor Marty Walsh (bid en’s right) — Photo by Robert Deutsch, USA TODAY Staff

LARRY RAWSON

Track analyst Larry Rawson, who has covered the Boston Marathon for 40 years, knows better than most what makes a 26.2-mile race on the third Monday in April such a special day.

“We don’t have royalty; our royalty in sports is things like the Masters and like the Boston Marathon … that’s the respect that the sport in general holds for the Boston Marathon. If it’s an institution, it’s Harvard. If it’s golf, it’s the Masters. It’s looked upon that way,” said Rawson, who is part of Universal Sports broadcast team.

Besides being a runner, Rawson grew up nearby in Newton, Mass., and went to Boston College. Being from Boston, he knows about the city’s resiliency.

“It came to my mind that when this whole thing occurred right after our race went off the air, a couple of hours after, these crazy guys picked on the wrong event because everybody loves the marathon in Massachusetts, and the resolve of the people couldn’t have been greater afterwards.

“You know, you’ll never break the will of marathoners. It was a crazy reason for that standpoint. And then the last year at Boston and Chicago and other major races I’ve been to, people just kept saying I’m going to be there. I’m coming up for this event. I’m going to be supportive. And the thinking is we’re normally a half a million people watch this race, there could be as much as a million people turning out on this race course,” he said.

Plus Rawson thinks spectators will see a compelling race. “They’ve stacked this field with the deepest and fastest quality field that they’ve ever had,” he said, citing runner’s times. “They’ve got the top two marathoners in the world that have come in. Lelisa Desisa from Ethiopia, who won last year, contacted Boston and said, ‘I want to give back my medal to the city and the people. And he gave up his gold medal and came back to Boston for a ceremony that was really pretty touching.”

DAVE McGILLIVRAY

As the race director of the Boston Marathon, Dave McGillivray commands huge respect from the running world. Not only does he run the storied Boston race from a planning and organizational standpoint, he runs it from a running standpoint.

In fact, he’s run 41 consecutive Boston Marathons and plans to make it 42 on Monday.

McGillivray, hard at work during the marathon, waits until the day is almost over, then heads out to Hopkinton and runs the course alone, supported by family members and friends.

Last year, because the aftermath of the bombings consumed him and his staff, he didn’t run the course until 11 days later.

McGillivray says the Boston Marathon takes about 14 months to plan, largely because it runs through not just one city but eight different municipalities, starting in Hopkinton.

Of course, this year, the tasks seemed monumental. McGillivray says he spent the first two to three months after last year’s race responding to the tragedy and its victims. Then came dealing with his constituency – the runners. Did the ones who were stopped on the course qualify as finishers? Would they be invited back? What about the increased demand for this year’s race? What would the field size be? And what about security?

(Eventually, the field size was set at 36,000, 9,000 more than usual, with all the runners who were stopped last year invited back.)

All those logistics could have made the last 12 months seem like a lifetime. But McGillivray says, in some ways, they seem like just a few moments.

“It seems like yesterday that all this happened,” he says. “It’s been so constant. I haven’t been able to step away. It’s been 24/7 since April 15. I never took a break. We had to maintain our game face, because we owe it to the runners, the city of Boston and to the world to put on a world-class marathon.

“You can’t just take a two-month sabbatical. You stay at it, stay at it, stay at it. This has always been a massive undertaking. Most runners consider it a holy grail, the most prestigious race in the world. So no pressure there.”

As if figuring out how this year’s race would be different wasn’t enough to deal with, McGillivray was diagnosed in October with coronary artery disease – a narrowing of the arteries.

As he does with most things, he attacked the problem aggressively, changing his diet and eventually losing 27 pounds. He now weighs 129, a pretty good runner’s weight for a man 5-4.

“I figure something good can come out of this,” he says.

LYLE MICHELI

Lyle Micheli has been the medical coordinator at the Boston Marathon finish line since 1975, treating the usual ailments that result from running 26.2 miles. He’s gone through countless IV bags for dehydration and thousands of ACE bandages. Never before was there a need for a tourniquet.

Until April 15, 2013.

“Our great frustration was that we had no equipment,” he said. “We didn’t expect wounds. We’re there to take care of runners who are dehydrated or hypothermic,” Micheli said before Tuesday’s tribute event.

When the blasts occurred last year, Micheli thought it was a prank. Some college kids setting off a stink bomb. Then he turned and saw the carnage. He ran into Marathon Sports, the store that soon became a triage center, and pulled shirts off the rack to use as makeshift tourniquets.

Micheli, also the director of sports medicine at Boston Children’s Hospital, served in Vietnam, treating soldiers who stepped on land mines. Never before had he seen the severity, and the number, of leg injuries as he did that day.

Amid the chaos, the quick actions of so many first responders, the close proximity of hospitals and the number of doctors on hand (victims largely came in during a shift change meaning hospitals were double-staffed) saved lives. “We didn’t have a single amputee die,” Micheli said. “A lot of good things occurred. We were lucky.”

Given last year’s attack, much will be different for Monday’s race – from tightened security to medical equipment. This year medical personnel will be equipped with trauma kits, which include tourniquets, purchased from the Israeli army.

This will be the same: Micheli will be at the finish just as he has been for the past four decades. “It was a sneak attack, and it’s not going to scare us away,” he said.

Some of them pushed through April 15, 2013, by working to help others who were badly injured in the bombings. All were left irrevocably (…)

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